Grandmaster George Koltanowski dies at age 96

by Sam Sloan

George Koltanowski, the greatest showman
and promoter that chess has ever known, is dead at age 96.
He died of congestive heart failure in San Francisco on
February 5, 2000.

Koltanowski set the world's blindfold
record on September 20, 1937 in Edinburgh by playing 34
chess games simultaneously while blindfolded. This made
headline news around the world. His record still stands
in the "Guinness Book of Records."

Later, both Najdorf and Flesch claimed to
have broken that record, but their efforts were not properly
monitored the way that Koltanowski's was.

George Koltanowski

Born in Antwerp, Belgium on September 17,
1903, George Koltanowski got his first big break in chess at
age 21, when he visited an international tournament in
Merano, planning to play in one of the reserve sections.

The organizers were apparently confused or
mixed up about his identity and asked him to play in the
grandmaster section, to replace an invited player who had
not shown up.

Koltanowski gladly accepted. He finished
near the bottom but drew Grandmaster Tarrasch and gained
valuable experience.

He thereafter played in at least 25
international tournaments. However, Koltanowski became
better known for touring and giving simultaneous exhibitions
and blindfold displays.

Based upon his results during the period
1932-1937, Professor Elo gave Koltanowski a rating of 2450
in "The Rating of Chess Players." Koltanowski was
awarded the International Master Title in 1950 when the title
was first officially established and was awarded an Honorary
Grandmaster title in 1988. However, Koltanowski's record as
a tournament player was not especially distinguished. He
showed up for the 1946 US Open in Pittsburgh, but was
eliminated in the preliminary section and did not qualify
for the finals. This was to be his last tournament.

In those years, the US Open was played in
round robin preliminary and final sections. However, the
next year, Koltanowski returned, not as a player but as
the director. He introduced the Swiss System. He directed
the 1947 US Open in Corpus Christi, Texas, using the Swiss
System for the first time ever in a US Open chess event.

After that, he transversed the country,
holding Swiss System tournaments everywhere. Before long,
the Swiss System was adopted as the standard for all chess
tournaments in America.

Koltanowski thereafter toured the United
States tirelessly for years, running chess tournaments and
giving simultaneous exhibitions everywhere. After his
failure in the 1946 US Open in Pittsburgh, he never played
tournament chess again, except that he did play two games
as a member of the US Olympic Team in 1952 in Helsinki,
getting a draw with Soviet Grandmaster Kotov, one of the
strongest players in the world, and a draw with Hungarian
International Master Tibor Florian, in a game which
Koltanowski appeared to be winning.

Koltanowski will not be remembered as a
player but as an exhibitor, writer, promoter and showman.
Possessed with an incredibly powerful memory, Koltanowski
would give exhibitions, playing several games blindfold
simultaneously. Strangely, what wowed the spectators the
most was not that he would win all the games, even though
blindfolded, but that after the games were over, he would
recite the complete moves of the games without looking at
the board, something which any competent master can do.

Many of Koltanowski's relatives died in
the Holocaust. Koltanowski survived because he happened to
be on a chess tour of South America and was in Guatemala
when the war broke out. In 1940, the United States Consul
in Cuba saw Koltanowski giving a chess exhibition in Havana
and decided to grant him a US visa.

Koltanowski met his wife Leah on a blind
date in New York in 1944. They settled in San Francisco in
1947. Koltanowski became the chess columnist for the San
Francisco Chronicle, which carried his chess column every
day for the next 52 years until his death. Koltanowski
wrote the only daily newspaper chess column in the world.
He published an estimated 19,000 columns.

In the 1960s, he played a newspaper game
against grandmaster Paul Keres. Following a system similar
to that adopted in the Kasparov vs. Rest of the World Match,
readers would vote on moves and send them into the Chronicle.
Koltanowski would select the move actually played, and would
award points and prizes to his readers for their selections.
However, after about only 25 moves, Keres abruptly stopped
the game and declared Keres the winner by adjudication.
Koltanowski disagreed and showed analysis which seemed to
give him at least an even game. I suspect that Keres of
Estonia was ordered by his Soviet handlers to stop playing.

Koltanowski had his own organization,
the Chess Friends of Northern California, which resisted
the USCF rating system and dominated Northern California
Chess through the mid-1960s. Koltanowski later decided
"if you cant beat 'em, join 'em." He won election
as President of the United States Chess Federation in 1974.
He also directed every US Open from 1947 until the late
1970s.

Koltanowski wrote many books. His best
known work is "Adventures of a Chess Master"
published by David McKay in 1955. In it, he recounts
primarily his tours giving blindfold simultaneous
exhibitions.

Perhaps Koltanowski's most remarkable
accomplishment was that he made his living entirely from
chess. He wrote books on the Colle System, which he sold
by mail order. He taught a system which would enable even
rank beginners to get out of the opening with a playable
game. This saved his students the trouble of memorizing
vast amounts of chess opening theory. However, he never
played this opening himself against strong opponents.